Defence offence

Two intelligence alerts that had security agencies on their toes last week a threat to Hyderabad,hosting the World Badminton Championship,and an input from Kashmir that a Lashkar-e-Toiba group had reached Delhi ahead of Independence Day turned out to be erroneous after investigation,leaving many officials red-faced. Also because the Hyderabad threat prompted an ultra-cautious British national team to withdraw from the badminton tournament. As it turns out,the source of both these inputs was defence intelligence agencies. When none of the leads matched,the trail was followed backwards to realise that the basis of all these inputs was speculative. In one case,the origin was a loose conversation among prison inmates. Even last year,alarm bells had rung over certain so-called specific inputs from defence agencies which turned out to be false,provoking top security officials to send a stern message to them. Clearly,it didnt work.